The Internet has emerged as a powerful advertising tool. It is commonplace to see advertisements on many web sites. For example, advertisements may be displayed on search web sites and may be targeted to individuals based upon search terms provided by the individuals. Other web sites, such as news and sports web sites, may provide space for advertisements. The owners of these web sites may sell advertising space to advertisers to offset the costs associated with operating the web sites as well as to turn a profit.
Internet based video streaming and image browsing have also been growing in popularity. For example, web sites, such as YouTube® and Hulu® enable users to select video clips, such as television programs, movies, or personal videos, for display on a browser. In some cases, commercials are inserted between scenes of a video or are adjacent to the images. For example, Hulu® videos typically include commercials inserted between arbitrary scenes of a given video.
Currently, however, advertisements associated with the videos are only tangentially related to a given video. For example, an automobile advertisement may simply be inserted between scenes of a video that are not related to automobiles. This tends to diminish the effectiveness of the advertisement, which results in a lower associated conversion rate for the advertisement.